1. Field
The disclosed embodiments generally relate to power supplies. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to the design of a high-voltage DC power supply, which is powered by an AC line, and which operates without using a step-up transformer.
2. Related Art
High-voltage DC power supplies that provide moderate power output are commonly used in a number of applications, such as: lasers, photographic flash units, displays and audio tube amplifiers. These high-voltage power supplies typically step up the AC line voltage by using a step-up transformer as the first stage before rectification and filtering to generate a DC output. However, in order to operate effectively at the line frequency, the step-up transformer generally needs to be large and heavy. Furthermore, the step-up transformer is likely to be an expensive custom component, because such step-up transformers are not widely used.
Hence, what is needed is a high-voltage DC power supply that does not require such a step-up transformer.